Months ago, Quincy Media, formerly Quincy Newspapers, announced it was selling to Gray TV for $925 million. However, it’s not until now that those effects are showing, and it affects TV stations serving Iowa. The tip-off was an ad during Friday’s “Jeopardy!” that said the Heroes & Icons network is coming to KWWL 7.2.
Gray’s acquisition of WGEM in Quincy has resulted in the breakup of perhaps (??) the last newspaper-radio-TV cluster in the country. The Quincy Herald-Whig and Hannibal Courier-Post were sold to an Arkansas owner earlier this year. Gray is also getting KTIV in Sioux City and KTTC in Rochester.
However, because Gray entered the eastern Iowa market six years ago with its purchase of KCRG, it could not also own KWWL. KWWL and WXOW in La Crosse, which includes Allamakee and Winneshiek counties in its area, are going to Allen Media instead. The Department of Justice resolution of divestment was just filed last week (PDF). The first item in a list of “Excluded Assets” is KWWL’s CW affiliation. The CW moved to KWWL 7.2 in 2016.
But where is the CW going, and what happens to the H&I subchannel already running on KCRG 9.4? It took until the actual moves on Monday to find out. The CW has moved to KCRG 9.3 — although it did NOT move from Mediacom Channel 107. (Keeping subchannels grouped and in order in cable lineups is not a priority.) According to the story from KCRG, moving CW to 9.3 and making it HD “uses our entire bandwidth,” which means axing the previous 9.3 (Antenna TV), 9.4 (the old H&I), 9.5 (Start TV), and 9.6 (Circle, a country-music-oriented network).
I presume the affiliates will have their graphics and web packages switched in the future, meaning WGEM/KTTC/KTIV will look more like KCRG and WOWT, while KWWL will look like Allen-owned KIMT.
These aren’t the only recent changes in ownership for Iowa TV stations. Nexstar bought Tribune Broadcasting in 2019, which caused a conflict in both Des Moines and the Quad Cities. Nexstar held on to WHO, its new station in Des Moines, and WHBF, its old (2013) station in the Quad Cities. It sold WOI and WQAD to Tegna, a company made up of the stations formerly belonging to Gannett. Tegna then got into a retransmission dispute with DirecTV, and then got into a retransmission dispute with Mediacom that is now going into its eighth month and may result in Mediacom users in two Iowa markets missing out on the Iowa-Iowa State game unless they can switch to good old-fashioned rabbit ears.